entrepreneur

What Is a Lifestyle Business?

A lifestyle business is a small business whose main goal is to meet the lifestyle needs of the owner(s).

How is that different from a startup? Typically, a startup has growth goals beyond just supporting the founder’s lifestyle needs. The ultimate goal of most startups is to grow into a larger business or achieve a similar high-value exit such as a merger or acquisition (although most do not achieve such high goals).

Examples of lifestyle businesses might be:

  • An individual freelancer, coach, or consultant,
  • A “micro” business (typically fewer than five employees),
  • A solo online business,
  • A “side gig” business, such as selling from home on an online marketplace like Etsy or Ebay,
  • A small family business,
  • Running a blog, being a social “micro” influencer, etc

Keep reading this article about lifestyle businesses on my website, SoloBizGuide.

Focus & Consistency

What is the key to success for an online solopreneur?

Unfortunately there is no guaranteed key to success… But I do believe there are two important necessary ingredients: FOCUS and CONSISTENCY.

Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

Focus = being frugal with your energy

The first necessary ingredient for solopreneur success is Focus: knowing your target customer and end goal, and focusing on those business activities that get you there.

It’s very easy to spread your energy across many different ideas (I do it too!), without any one area getting enough focus to have an impact. As a solo business owner, it’s vitally important to focus your efforts to achieve results with the limited energy and resources that you have as one individual.

Consistency = being frugal with your time

The second necessary ingredient is Consistency: follow the straight line path to achieve your goals by being consistent in your business activities on a day-by-day and week-by-week basis.

You have limited time, so make the most of it by having a regular schedule of activities that you do every day or every week. Each action builds on the actions of the previous days. That is how you have an impact as just one person.

That means posting to your blog or channel regularly (if you commit to weekly or daily, then stick to it), listing new items for sale in your store every single day, sending a client proposal out every day, or making twenty cold calls or emails every day. Your exact goal(s) will depend on your business and the product or service that you offer, but know what those daily goals are, make a list, and check off your list EVERY SINGLE DAY.

It’s easy to get discouraged and decide you need to try something new. And sure, sometimes it is necessary to pivot. But remember: Strong businesses aren’t built overnight, but if you really know your target customer and what they need, you price your product or service right, and you’re Focused and Consistent every single day, then over time you WILL see the impact of your efforts.

7 Steps to a Marketing Strategy

As a solopreneur it can be really hard to find time for strategy. After all, you’re already wearing multiple hats. Sometimes strategy feels like an afterthought.

But doing marketing without strategy is like trying to build a home without an architect’s house plan. You can hire the very best carpenter, electrician, and plumber, but without a plan you’ll probably end up with a mess.

The same goes for marketing. Sure, you can find a great graphic designer, web developer, content writer and social media manager. But if you don’t have a strategy you can waste money and time very quickly without any results to show for it.

Follow these 7 steps to develop your marketing strategy.

Notice this starts with understanding your Market and your Customer, not your Product.

The first four steps help you build a detailed picture of your ideal customer.

Then understand their needs and pain points… That allows you to properly message your Product to serve their needs.

Finally, the communications strategy is just about identifying the best way to reach your ideal customer where they are looking for solutions.

Learn more about the Seven Step Strategy here, where you can also download my ebook on the 7 Step Marketing Strategy Process.

Create Your Go-to-Market Plan

A successful launch can be a critical ingredient to the long-term viability of your product or service. Here are some ideas to help you plan a successful launch to really boost your product or company’s success. You can also use our Go-to-Market Toolkit to plan your go-to-market strategy for launch.

Photo by Anna Nekrashevich on Pexels.com

Having a strong go-to-market or launch plan will not only help ramp your sales once you do launch. It can also give you a feel for the marketplace. The reaction of potential customers to your product pre-launch marketing can help you complete final tweaks or positioning of your product before launch rather than scrambling after.

The Go-to-Market Toolkit includes a go to market strategy template, “How to Launch Your Product” guide, checklists and go-to-market plans that you can use to make sure your new product or service introduction is as successful as possible.

These are just some of the benefits for your Go-to-Market plan:

  • Easily create a professional plan to launch your product or service.
  • Save time by using our templates – the hard work is done for you!
  • No more headaches not knowing how to plan your marketing.
  • Free up your focus for important product development tasks rather than worrying about promotion.
  • Target your messages to the best prospects and channels to maximize your launch impact.

Click here to check out the Go-to-Market template.

Can You Be Your Own Boss?

Have you ever wondered whether to be your own boss?

Almost everyone who has or has ever held a job, has thought about what it would be like to work for themselves, with no boss to tell them what to do.

Be your own boss? Sounds perfect! When can I start?

But the reality is not quite that simple… being your own boss does not mean that you get to do whatever you want whenever you want (unless, of course, you are independently wealthy already). It also doesn’t mean that you can only do those aspects of your business that you love.

When you’re working for yourself, there will always be grunt work, whether you have a boss telling you to do it or not.

So what does it take to be a successful solo business owner?

Keep reading to learn the skills needed to successfully work for yourself, and how to get started as a Solopreneur.

Do You Have Solopreneur Skills?

These are the skills needed to be your own boss:

  • dedication, patience & consistency
  • drive
  • self-discipline
  • ability to focus & prioritize, while also having the flexibility to pivot to meet customer demand
  • leadership skills – even if you don’t have employees, you have to be able to make decisions and “lead” your business
  • self awareness – know yourself (be realistic), and know how to combine your passion & your skills, while protecting your business from your weaknesses
  • stress management skills
  • ability to set your personal emotions aside (if a customer doesn’t like your product or your work, it’s important to listen to their feedback, just try not to take it personally).

How to get Started as a Solopreneur

If you think you have the skills needed to be your own boss, then here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Know your Goals

Think about why do you want to be your own boss? What do you hope to get out of your solopreneurship journey? What aspects of your work are important to you?

Make a list of your goals for your business and your work life (keep it short). This should guide your planning.

2. Know your Skills

Think about your past jobs, your hobbies, education, or other activities. What did you enjoy doing? What aspects were you particularly good at? What did you NOT like, or were not good at?

3. Figure Out your Finances

What is your personal financial situation? how much money do you NEED to earn? how can you downsize, if needed? how much money will you need to start your business?

4. Put an Initial Plan Together

If you’re bootstrapping your business, you may not need a lengthy, detailed business plan. But you should know the basics of your business’s finances, who your customers will be and how you will find them.

5. Seek Out your Community

As your own boss, you will no longer have the proverbial “water cooler” or office chit-chat and support. Know yourself and your own needs, and seek out local groups or online communities that you could participate in instead.

6. Get Customer Feedback

Realize that you may no longer have a traditional boss, but instead you have to sometimes make your customers or clients your boss. At the end of the day, your business is serving the needs of your customers: know what they want, and deliver that exceptionally well.

To get started, seek out individuals who represent your target customer and gather their feedback, interview them, and ask questions.

7. Find a Mentor

When you’re your own boss there’s no one to bounce decisions around with, and no one else to give you advice or support. An experienced mentor or coach can help guide you as you plan and manage your solo business.

I provide solo business coaching and have worked with hundreds of small businesses and solopreneurs over the past 25 years. You can learn more here.

How Important is “Passion” in Solopreneurship?

Many business guides for the new or aspiring entrepreneur tell you to start with what you are “passionate” about.

But how important is “passion” really when starting a new business? Is the owner of the dry cleaners on the corner really passionate about clean clothes? Does the convenience store owner dream about stacking boxes of soda?

Passion (what you enjoy doing) is only one of the trifecta of ingredients for a successful startup. The other two are skills (what are you good at?) and financials (what will make money?).

So, yes, passion is important. As a solo business owner, there won’t be anyone to tell you to get back to work. You’ll need to be self-motivated, even when things are going badly and/or you don’t enjoy the specific task that needs doing. It’s much easier to be self-motivated when you are passionate about what your business stands for, or really enjoy the topic or focus of your business.

But passion certainly isn’t everything. I may be passionate about opera, but if I can’t sing and I can’t think of any way to monetize it, then it’s not going to make for a good business.

Ideally, a good lifestyle business idea should be a combination of:

  • activities that you really enjoy, or a mission that you’re passionate about,
  • skills that differentiate you from your competition (or that you can learn to do better), and
  • opportunities to earn money in a scaleable way.

The word “scaleable” is important in that last bullet, particularly for a solo business. I’ll be writing more about it in another post. “Scaleable” earnings mean that the business can grow even with a limited amount of resources (time, money) that you’re able to put into it. Non-scaleable earnings are things like one-on-one hourly consulting work (dollars per hour of your time) since there’s always going to be a cap on how much you can charge on an hourly basis, and how many hours you’re able to bill out on a weekly basis.

Some people may refer to “passive income”, but the truth is that growing a business is never passive, so I prefer to use the term “scaleable income”.

What business should you start?

There are many opportunities for the solopreneur, from freelancing to ecommerce to writing. If your focus is to do it the frugal way by bootstrapping your business with no outside funds, then you have a lot of options available to you if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.

photo of woman using her laptop

Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

Here are just a few possibilities to think about. But the final decision is yours alone: what do you enjoy doing? what specific skills or experience do you have?

Freelancing

Freelancing is a great option if you want the flexibility of working from anywhere, but like to be part of a virtual team or do work for other people. Specialties include graphic design, coding, web design, social media management, writing or editing. A good place to start is to take a look at a freelancing site such as Upwork to see what types of projects are available.

Selling on Amazon, eBay, etc

It is easy to set up a seller account on sites such as Amazon and eBay and list a few things for sale. All you need is a Paypal account and/or credit card to get paid. However, the challenge is in finding the right items to sell at the right price, taking great pictures, writing excellent descriptions, and getting traffic to your items.

Your Own eCommerce Store

Whether you sell your own products that you make, or resell items at a profit, you can quickly set up your own website to sell from using PayPal or Stripe. The biggest challenge will be to get visitor traffic to your store (assume conversion rates of only a few percent, so you need at least 100 visitors daily to make sales every day). This is where writing comes in (see below): even if your website is sales-focused, you need to be constantly adding new content via a blog or articles that will bring in search engine traffic.

Selling Digital Products

There are many things you can create and then sell that don’t involve having to send a package in the mail: create your own app or software, write an ebook, sell your photography or web templates – the list goes on.

Blogging or Writing Online

If you enjoy writing, then setting up a blog or informational website might be a good option for you. You need to make sure you’re adding new top-quality content regularly (at least weekly), posting it to social media, and participating in other online communities where your readers might hang out.

Where most bloggers and website owners fail is being able to bring in a large enough volume of visitor traffic to make any monetization option successful. Whether you sell your own informational products (eg, ebooks), link to affiliate products (eg, Amazon) or use PPC ads such as Google AdSense, you need a lot of traffic to earn a living from this option.

I highly recommend the SBI (Solo Build It!) platform to help you build an online business with traffic, and not just a blog which no one reads. I have a few SBI websites and I’m very happy with all the tools they provide – those sites get a lot more traffic than others I have hosted elsewhere!  You can check out SBI here.

My Path to Solopreneurship

alone autumn mood forest cold countryside

Photo by Gabriela Palai on Pexels.com

My path to solopreneurship was driven by a combination of necessity and a desire for self-fulfillment. I’d had a successful career in tech marketing strategy, working at companies like Intel and Gartner Group. But I was becoming tired of the cubicle 9-5 being constantly surrounded by people (I’m a natural introvert), and as the mother of a young son I wanted to spend more time at home with him. But could I afford to do so?

The realization came when I sat down one day to see how much money I was really spending on working for someone else:  commute costs into the city every day, coffee and lunch, professional clothing, school before/after care costs, babysitting costs, and all the extra expenses we tend to incur for the sake of convenience when there isn’t enough time to do it all:  takeout food, housecleaning services, dog walkers, salon services, etc.  Despite a six-figure salary, the percentage going to all these extra expenses was still astounding. Clearly, I couldn’t afford NOT to work from home.

That was five years ago.

I’d love to say it was easy, and I quickly reached the same income as my 9-5. In truth, it was a lot harder than I’d expected, but more satisfying than I’d anticipated as well. I think the biggest challenge was knowing where to focus my time and energy for the maximum results, and not getting distracted by the next new shiny thing. When you’re working for yourself, new ideas and opportunities come up all the time, and it’s tempting to go after them. But each new project takes more time to mature than you realize. Focus is the friend of the first-time solopreneur!

In my next posts, I’ll go into more detail on ways to develop focus and scale as a solopreneur, what worked for me, and what is still work in progress, so stay tuned!